Streaminglining solofication

I’m what you call a game players. I love games. Since my first when I was barely teen (back in the 80’s) and tabletop games before then. It’s just something I’ve done in my whole life and when my wife calls me a gaming nerd I take it as a term of endarement.

I’m not afraid of it. What always bother me are the idiotic noob, newbie etc arguments people use when instead of articulating a different viewpoint they think anyone is just not a ‘gamer’ for not agreeing in what is often a elitist pov. Just as I don’t care of the ‘elitist’ term because it’s an intellectually weak counterargument by people who don’t like someones really diehard gamer insight.
To me things are about whether it makes sense or not; regardless if it’s company policy, just how it is or people willing to define themselves by simplistic terms.

That’s why the whole spat over removing Crucible is so comical to me.

Because the arguments seems to break between the noobs who just want to run everything on Elite in 5 minutes without effort and the Elitists that just want everyone to learn the complicated puzzles, mazes and timing of traps and features by spending hours and hours in a game.

Both ignore of course the reality that for noobs time is most of the time a premium and the features grognards love like spending tons of time prefecting things is just not desired. And Elitists forget that a majority of gamers just don’t see much point with platforming, puzzles and something that resemble more like work then fun.

And I don’t think it’s ever about wanting to run everything on elite in 5 minutes without effort or to spend hours and hours in games learning every single pixel of the entire quest.

The reality is that people like me who love games also knows that the reality is that not everyone love grinding and wasting time on things that require’work’. And I’m serious – I don’t find puzzles, timing traps and mazes fun. They make no sense to me. Why would the challenge of walking through a maze to fight badass champions in the end make sense to anyone?

Here – collect these horns by swimming through traps, go through a maze, time some puzzle and run through a gauntlet, then fight a bunch of guys while you get to the champions. Then you need to BEAT those champions in order to be able to go on.

Why not beat to the chase and beat up the champions?

Or there’s this uber kobold in a volcano surrounded by fire elementals and such and you have to go through this puzzle to get to him, because badass kobolds always build silly puzzles in volcanoes because they’re scurred!

Now take vale. I understand vale quests, despite its silly mechanics. Like dust? Oh yeah – you need to find these two books, After the first you realize that you can’t kill any of the spiders but until you actually pick it up – you can kill as many as you want. The spider queen don’t mind that you kill any of them until then and she’s perfectly fine with you saving her ass but as soon as you kill too many in the end it’s automatic faul. Regardless if you saved her. Why? I dunno. Arbitrary reasoning for making a quest doesn’t require logic.

Here’s the thing; the giants have a problem and you have to do stuff before they let you kicks some dracons and then confront the raid boss. Fair enough. But does it matter if the flagging quest is a silly one that require a contorted reason before you can fight a bunch of champions?

I don’t think so; see most people don’t like the quest because it’s all the things that reminds it of work. I don’t mind it since I’m a gamer but if I don’t have to do it, it’s fine with me. I also understand that there have been fewer LFM up for anything GH – the raid practically never runs and other then a few TR groups, most things are know the quest and BYOH. Now that’s not really conductive to your average PUG and I don’t think that’ll be good for attracting people to run GH quests and the raid.

Hand on your hearts? Are there some raids that no one really runs anymore and why is that?

Turbine is a business and the reality is that making the flagging process more solo friendly also confronts the reality that you see less pug friendly LFM and more BYOH groups now a days. That’s why I solo. Not because I want to run everything in 5 minutes on elite and don’t appriciate a more complicated quest. I just don’t want to spend tons of time in a frustraing illogical quest circumventing a quest designed for a group rathern then induvidual. The argument seems to be that you CAN solo Crucible, but the laundry list always involve ‘as long’ which means a lot of mechanism I find mindnumbingly boring.

I think the level 15 quests out of the harbor are examples of the kind of ‘nifty’ quests I find interesting. Not to long, but a lot of mechanics along the way to make it interesting.
The latest update 16 are not. The feel more like rail shooters. You don’t even have to explore. Just follow the big fat arrow, chop heads and then profit.
I don’t mind side doors, cob webbed passages and alternative routs. I just don’t think idiotic puzzles in the middle on anywhere that’s just there to waste your time for no other reason then that’s how a platformer functions is fun.

Others do – and good for them.

And none of this means that I’m a noob, want everything handed to me on a plate and don’t require a sacrifice of time for me to get what I want through reasonable grinding.
But if I can spare my sanity by doing something that that takes twice as long and require 15 red named bosses I’ll do it as long as there’s some bling in it for me. I don’t care if I have to take side doors, side passages, jump over sharks doing it as long as I don’t need timing, puzzles and corny reasoning requiring several hirelings and a understanding of pulling levers by counting on dumb hirelings doing it.

Count me out.

But if they made Cabal harder, longer or whatever to satisfy people as long as I can solo it I’m all game. Because in the end it’s not about the complexity – just as with action movies I don’t want to have to think when I’m gaming. I just want the fireworks.

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2 thoughts on “Streaminglining solofication”

Thats one of the thinks I don’t understand, these places are “real” places whee pepole/monsters live and work, the set-up of traps and puzzles makes no sense. This odd set-up starts on Korthos, when one is trying to rescue(convince) Lars Hayton to help, why are the crystals that power his shield placed in an easily suaghin accessible location. Any trap or security measure has to make sense from a lgical perspective. You wouldnt run to two seperate locations in your place of employment just to open a main door forward, it makes no sense to have to do it in a fantasy setting, even an off switch for some trap locations after the trap has been bypassed is also needed as the person living/working in a location would presumaly leavethey need to be able to turn off the trap so they can exit, unless they are using a secret exit in which case why are the adventures using the front door and not the secret entrance/exit. Traps and security measures need to make sense for the people that live and work in a location.

Or a puzzle in the floor to secure a scroll but the only thing guarding is rats, spiders and some red named fish dude living in a hole that wakes up and get all mad when you find a key he could have found a long time ago? Luckily that one is short. Short I can deal with.

It’s when it gets long and one after another that I roll my eyes and form my fingers into a shooting mechanism against the roof of my mouth.

I get it; it’s the platformer in games where stuff like that should make sense. The other day I found a side passage in the level 15 harbor end quest I’ve never seen before.

Hiddden wall in the seal room I think, you jump over pillars, fight some baddies and profit. SCORE! It was awesome. Sometimes you CAN have nice things.